Lost in the Mists of Time
by noenigma
Summary: Lewis takes a trip in time back to visit those he left behind...or does he? Not quite as odd as it sounds.
1. Chapter 1

_Occasionally, someone will send me an idea for a story. Usually, I try not to dismiss such suggestions out of hand even though I find it much easier to write up my own ideas. But, sometimes...it's all too apparent the idea isn't workable, and instead of thinking of how I could possibly turn that idea into a story, I'm left trying to come up with a polite way of saying, "Are you absolutely crazy? That's the most insane idea for a story I've ever read!" This is definitely one of those ideas…the kind you read and shake your head and _know_ you've crossed paths with someone who has been over-indulging in Doctor Who…and yet, for all its madness and despite its incredibly bad timing arriving only days before I was heading out on a cross-country adventure to visit my grandbaby, the crazy thing went ahead and turned into a story. And here it is…I've tried to keep it from traveling too far off course. _

_This one is set before Lewis was quite ready to turn over a new chapter…_

Disclaimer: Purely for fan purposes; no copyright infringement intended.

**Lost in the Mists of Time**

Heading the Wrong Way on the One Way Street of Time

"_Aside from velcro, time is the most mysterious substance in the universe."_ Dave Barry

It shouldn't have happened. And, having never been one for taking flights of fancy, he was quite convinced it hadn't. His ale that night must have been off, or it was that _Doctor Who_ he'd half-dozed through waiting for Lyn to arrive, or he'd eaten a slice or two more than he should have of the pizza she'd ordered as they'd sat up late talking of the old days…or it could have been the too–late night itself. Or just the memories their late night nattering had stirred up. Those of Val and Morse and days long gone. Days he would have happily called back and reveled in given a choice.

That was what, in the end, he convinced himself it had all been about…because he couldn't accept the alternative. That it really had happened even though it shouldn't have; couldn't have…

One moment he'd been tossing in his bed, his legs tangled in the blankets he'd half-thrown off in his restlessness. He'd been trapped in one of those endless nights where he felt like he'd been trying to fall asleep the entire night but every time he squinted at his clock he'd find instead of mere minutes it was exactly one hour since he'd last bothered. He'd decided the last time that he'd lain there long enough and he might as well get up and putter about, only, of course, he'd still been trapped there in the muddleness of waking and sleep, and only when his tossing sent his pillow falling to the floor and he had that heart-stopping sensation of falling along with it had he jerked awake…only, he hadn't really.

Couldn't have, because everything was wrong…or rather everything was right in a very wrong sort of way. Because when he sat up and looked around the moonlit room—only the night, and the day before it, had been shrouded in a deep, biting fog and besides, he had dark, heavy curtains that blocked out whatever light there was—only now he didn't, now he had the light, lacy things that had hung in their bedroom back when…and stirring behind him in the bed, her dark hair splayed out on her pillow and her arm lazily reaching out to touch his back was _his wife_.

"Robbie," she murmured…and he closed his eyes and let the sound of her voice fill him. She yawned and asked, "You getting it?" and only then did he hear the ringing of a phone, not his mobile which his sergeant had lately set to go off to the _Ride of the Valkyries_ though Morse would surely have turned over in his grave if he'd known, but the phone that he could make out on the nightstand…Lyn had taken that particular stand when he'd cleared out the house after Val…

"Robbie! You'll wake the kids!" she cried coming fully awake and scrambling up and across the bed to grab the phone. He sat there feeling the bed shift as she moved and realizing it was not only the absence of her reassuring breathing beside him that made sleep so hard to come by now that she was gone, but that too. Those shifts as she'd turned or shifted in her sleep—without them he was like a sailor unable to sleep without the pitching and rolling of the sea.

"Lewis residence," she said into the old-fashioned phone receiver as a sound made him look up and see she'd been right; the phone had woken the kids—Lyn anyway. But not the Lyn he'd kissed lightly on the cheek and sent off to bed with a 'good night, pet'. The Lyn he'd long ago tucked up into bed with the _Jumblies_, a kiss on the forehead, and a 'good night, pet—and not a peep till morning!" She stood there a moment, shivering in her thin nightgown in the cool, night air and he couldn't help himself. He cocked his head and she scurried over and climbed into the bed beside him. He breathed in her little girl smell as Val shifted over to let her wiggle under the blankets. He wanted nothing more than to lie down beside her, feel her cold little feet against him, and grin happily over her head at his wife…

But, his wife was dead, and his daughter grown, and at any rate, Val was holding the phone out to him, and he knew Hathaway was calling him out to a murder scene. He was up starting across to grab his clothes even as he took the phone from his dead wife's hand. Only…it wasn't Hathaway, but the duty sarge from the old Kidlington station, and he was to pick _Morse _up on the way—the chief inspector must have been hitting the sauce a bit hard that evening…only the drink had sent Morse into his grave long ago.

Lewis shook his head and sat back down on the bed.

Val groaned and said, "Robbie Lewis, if you come back to bed, and they have to call you out a second time…get on with you!"

"It's just a dream, Pet," he told her, turning so he could see her better. Because a dream or not, tussled with sleep or not, she was beautiful.

"Morse will have your hide if you're late turning up," she warned, and he sniffed and thought 'why not?' What would it hurt to ride this dream out to see his old chief inspector? He'd dreamed frequently of Val, good dreams that never, ever managed to stay that way throughout, but Morse…had he ever dreamt of Morse? A time or two when he'd first taken Hathaway on and his subconscious must have struggled to accept the shift in loyalties, but in them Morse had been only vague images melding into Hathaway and not really Morse himself. This was a different sort of dream altogether, and maybe…

Only, as much as he'd like to see Morse again, he'd much rather curl up beside his wife and daughter and—the phone rang out again, and this time he snatched it up.

"Lewis! Where are you? I could have walked to the scene by now!" Morse's voice came loud and disgruntled over the phone, and Lewis almost laughed to hear it.

But Val pulled her pillow over her head, and Lyn said, "Daddy! I'm trying to sleep!", and Lewis stifled his laugh, assured his dead boss he was on the way, pulled on his clothes—ones he'd folded and laid over the chair in the corner at the ready for just such a call all those years ago, ones that shouldn't have fit him any longer but did all the same. He made a hurried trip down the hall to relieve himself and make sure Morse would have nothing to complain about in the way of his hair…and the face peering back at him from the mirror wasn't the face he'd climbed into bed with, but the one he'd worn a good number of years before, one that matched the young dad he'd been when Lyn had still been small enough to squeeze into their bed in the night.

He laughed looking at that face in the mirror. As far as dreams went, this one was a corker.

Even so, he felt the old, familiar urgency hurrying him along. Morse was a demanding boss, and Lewis had already taken far too long in getting out the door. Still, Morse was dead and so was Val and if he had to go out on a call, he wasn't leaving without seeing her one more time. He crept into the room and knelt quietly by her side of the bed. He lightly stroked the side of her face, and she blinked her eyes open and frowned up at him.

"Robbie, is something wrong?" she asked.

He smiled at her and said, "Nope. Everything's just right." He kissed her then, a light, quick kiss because Morse was waiting for him, and because…she was dead and he wasn't going to go there. She reached up her hand to gently push him away.

"Get on, you…or you won't have a job to go to," she warned.

"Right, then," he said, "I'm off." But even then he knelt there a moment longer just taking her in.

"Robbie?"

"I love you. You know that? I…"

"Of course, I do…now go!" It was just a dream, but leaving her was harder than it had ever been back in the days he'd lived for a call out to a murder scene. Behind him, he heard her turn in the bed, and then she said what he'd been waiting for, longing for, though he hadn't known that was what he was doing.

"I love you, Robbie Lewis." It was enough. Tears filled his eyes and shut off his throat, but hearing those words from that voice was more than worth it.

He hesitated outside his son's door, wanting to open it and see the little boy Ken had been, to take in his smell and kiss his soft hair. And it was just a dream; time would be its usual wonky dreamself and those few moments could stretch to hours or pass in a blink of an eye and make no difference at all to the already fuming Morse…but, he hurried out into the thick, night mist to collect his dead boss all the same.


	2. Illegal U-Turn

Illegal U-Turn

He wasn't surprised to find how easily he slipped back into driving the old, secondhand car he'd driven back when he'd been Morse's young sergeant. Nor how automatic it was to drive straight to Morse's even though it had been years since he'd gone that way and he would have thought the streets would have changed a bit here and there along the way—well, they had; only now they hadn't. Everything was back the way it had been in his early days with Morse…

Surreal. That's what this night had become. A dream, surely, but like no dream he'd ever had before. Everything as real as it had been back then; only he was far from that sergeant he could glimpse in his rearview mirror. And that certain knowledge was all that kept this dream reality around him from seeming indistinguishable from reality itself.

The early hours of the night had left the streets virtually deserted, and the thick, swirling fog obscured what little traffic there was. He could easily have thought himself the only person out in all of Oxford. A quick shudder ran through him, and he nudged the heat up though it wouldn't do any good—the car heater had never worked well in all the years he'd owned it.

If he hadn't been so sure he was dreaming Morse's glower would have filled Lewis with foreboding and a distinct, almost desperate need to appease his chief inspector. As it was though, he was all too happy to see his old boss, glowering or not.

"Good morning, Sir!" he called as Morse rapped on his car window and frowned while Lewis unrolled it.

"My car, Sergeant! Now!" Morse spat out and huffed off to climb into the passenger side of his old red Jag. Lewis grinned in delight. Not only a chance to see Morse, but one more chance to drive the Jag. Why not? He quickly parked and ran over to join Morse.

"I don't even want to hear it, Lewis," Morse told him as soon as he climbed in.

"Right, Sir…what exactly would that be?" Lewis asked.

Morse harrumphed and then sighed. "Whatever the excuse…whatever it was that caused you to be so late in coming—you do realize, don't you, the importance of seeing the crime scene BEFORE all the evidence has been destroyed by the weather?"

"Ah, that…sorry, Sir. Won't happen again." No, for Morse was dead and would never again be left waiting for a lift to a crime scene or anywhere else. Of course, it hadn't happened then either, but Lewis had no intention of trying to explain what was what to the dream Morse beside him…better just to let the dream unfold as the night might have if it had really happened. "Old Rivvy didn't have much to say about the incident, Sir—"

"I should think not!" Morse huffed. "Sergeant Rivel dropped dead of a heart attack back in the spring…come on, Lewis. Wake up!" Rivvy dead, too—what was this, the dream of the dead?

"Sorry, Sir—"

"And stop apologizing every other word!"

"Right, Sir…must have still been asleep, but anyway, whoever I did talk to on the phone didn't give me any details. Do you know anything?"

"Many things, Lewis. I know many things…but no more than you about our case, I'm afraid." And just like that, Morse's ire was gone. Lewis was as mystified now as he had been back then about how Morse could drop his indignation and wrath from one moment to the next. Lewis had never found it that easy to let things go—of course, he'd never found it that easy to take them up in the first place either. "Mind how you go, Lewis!" Morse unnecessarily warned him as a car suddenly emerged from the mist to flash past them before disappearing back into the night.

It had been a black Jag even older than Morse's own, and the chief inspector frowned after it for a moment before beginning to lecture Lewis on the music he had playing on his tape deck. Lewis smiled to himself as he listened. Back in the day, he could have used the lecture, though he'd had no interest in Morse's old operas then and wouldn't have benefited at all from it. Now though, he had a remastered recording of the same music that he played quite frequently when Hathaway wasn't along to complain about it. And what would Morse have thought of that?

"I quite like it," Lewis told Morse, and the chief inspector looked at him suspiciously. "Ah…we should be getting close," Lewis said, slowing the car down and peering through the fog.

"There," Morse said, pointing. Lewis could vaguely make out lights and shadowy figures. He pulled over a bit farther from the scene than he'd intended, the distorting properties of the mist having tricked him into thinking the lights were closer than they really were. He went to pull forward, but Morse stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"What! What is this? Lewis?" Morse asked staring out at the poorly illuminated crime scene and the police vehicles parked willy-nilly along the deserted street.

"Sir?"

"It's Thursday!" Morse said in a quiet, disbelieving voice. Well, it hadn't been when Lewis had started this journey, but dreams and their wonky time…Morse tore his eyes away from the scene to stare at Lewis.

"Who called you, Lewis?"

"Well, like I said, I thought it was old Drivvey, but…"

"Yes, you said. And I thought you were mistaken, but…I should have known."

"Known what, Sir?" Lewis asked. The part of him that knew he was dreaming wondered just what sort of turn his dream was taking; but the other part of him was itching to get out of the car and get down to work…it seemed a fair number of people were already working their crime scene without them. "Shouldn't we get going, Sir?"

"You, not bothering to show up for so long, I should have known—you're nothing if not quick to a crime scene...and it is Thursday. No. This is all wrong. It's nothing but a dream, Lewis. Just a dream."

"Because it being Thursday?" Lewis asked mystified although why he wasn't quite sure…perhaps because he wasn't used to people in his dreams realizing that's all they were.

"No, Lewis, try to keep up. That," Morse pointed at the shadowy figure of a man wearing a hat and large trench coat, "is Fred Thursday, my old inspector—"

"I thought DI MacNutt was your old inspector?" Lewis interrupted him.

"We're a few years too early for that, Lewis. MacNutt was my inspector _after_ I made sergeant…"

"Ah," Lewis said. "So, do we get out or what?"

"Patience, Lewis, patience. It's a dream at any rate; this wet isn't going to do a bit of harm to whatever clues are out there."

"But what about all of them?" Lewis said motioning out the window. "They're mucking about with our crime scene!" Lewis heard himself and realized once again that he'd come a long way from being that young sergeant he'd once been…so why had he said those words? Earlier, for all time seemed to have gotten twisted and turned about, he'd been himself. The self he lived with every day in his time; now he felt himself slipping back and forth between the young, eager sergeant he'd been and the older, more…disillusioned man he'd become.

"And, we can learn more by sitting quietly and taking our time than rushing straight in—haven't I taught you anything?" Yes, Morse had taught him a vast number of things, and in time, Lewis had learned his lessons well. Including that one, but the younger man he'd been took a deep breath and gritted his teeth.

"Oh, come on, now…it's a dream for goodness sakes!" Morse huffed at him, but, nevertheless, he started to pull open the car door…then he stopped and nodded towards a large police officer standing just at the edge of the lights directed at the scene.

"Take a close look at Uniform standing there, Lewis. Recognize that man?"

Lewis squinted at the officer and shook his head. "No, Sir."

"Look close, Matey," Morse told him with a knowing look, and Lewis blinked in surprise.

"Never!" he said.

"And there," Morse said, pointing at the round, bespectacled man kneeling beside the mist-shrouded body.

This time Lewis knew at once. "Max," he said softly. He raised his eyes to take in all the men busily working the scene and asked, "Are they all dead then? Every one of them?" And both the older and the younger him found that thought hard to swallow: the sergeant because he was young and had yet to be touched personally by death's cold hand, and the inspector because he was old and had rubbed shoulders with death far too often. And been visited by too many dreams turned nightmares before they faded away.

"Lewis!" Morse exclaimed, "You are particularly obtuse as a dream. Of course, they are not ALL dead—haven't you been paying attention? You do see Strange and Max out there, don't you?" The younger Lewis blanched under Morse's attack, and the older had no choice but to go with him.

"Sorry, Sir. Right, Sir." Only it wasn't, because Max and Strange were both long gone…as was most everyone else Lewis had encountered in the night. Including the man sitting beside him.

Morse restrained himself from once more getting after Lewis for the apologizing. He shuddered violently as a young officer scurried around the car to make his way down the soft, moist slope towards the crime scene.

"And there's someone else not yet dead, Lewis," Morse said softly as though to himself. "And here's where I wake up…"

"Sir?" Lewis wished Morse luck with that—he'd already spent more time in this dream world than he would have imagined possible.

Morse suddenly made hurry up motions at Lewis and said, "Nevermind, Lewis, just—let's go. Let's get out of here."

"But what about the case?"

"There isn't a case for us, Lewis! Drive!"

"Yes, Sir," Lewis said. The fog had if anything thickened in the time they'd sat at the roadside, and the windows were wet and drippy, inside and outside. Lewis flipped on the wipers and rubbed his hand over the inside screen and asked, "Where exactly are we going?"

"Home. Just take me home, Lewis…there's no need for us to be out in this."

"What happened back there, Sir?"

Morse glanced over at him sheepishly. "Ever had that 'someone walked over my grave' sort of feeling?"

"Aye," Lewis agreed though the feeling he'd been having most often that night was one of deja vu.

"It's a bit….disconcerting to see yourself—even in a dream, Lewis—"

"That was you! Going round the car there?" Lewis cried, craning his neck behind him as though he might catch a glimpse back into that moment. He would have liked to get a good look at a young Morse.

"Watch were you're going, Lewis! Yes, it was me…remember that time in the cellar of St. Oswald's?" Lewis was unlikely to forget finding the body of a young lad buried under that pile of coke there…"How we both got spooked down at the far end?"

"And, practically ran out of there," Lewis finished for him with a grin.

"Exactly. That's how I felt there seeing—you weren't frightened though?"

"Nah."

"Well, you wouldn't be, would you? Being just a part of the dream and not the dreamer."

"I guess I wouldn't," Lewis said, but that hadn't worked for Morse, had it?

When he pulled up at Morse's, the chief inspector looked over at him and said, "I suppose it's far too late for you to come in for a drink?" Far too early more like; but…a chance for one last drink with Morse, he couldn't pass that up…and this being a dream and all, little matter that he was driving or that he'd need to be up in just an hour or two.

Sitting there in Morse's old flat, long before the fire had done its worst, drinking Morse's beer, listening to his music, and with no case on, having nothing really to talk about even if they hadn't both been too tired to say much…it was grand.

The only awkward moment when Morse asked, "And, how's Mrs. Lewis? Well, I hope." And how could Lewis answer that with Val dead? Fortunately, Morse didn't wait for an answer. "You'd best be getting back to her, I suppose. I'll see you in the morning—not early, understand? Strange can't begrudge us a late start after the night we've had."

"Right, Sir," Lewis said, taking the dismissal for what it was. He stood and hesitated a moment…he'd have liked to put his hand out and shaken Morse's in what felt to him a final good bye; Morse would wonder what was up with that—but, then, Morse already knew this night was more than a bit bizarre. Lewis shrugged and stuck out his hand toward Morse. Morse gave him a questioning look but accepted it.

"Good bye, then, Sergeant."

"Good bye, Sir."


	3. Taking the Wrong Turn

Taking the Wrong Turn

Stepping out of Morse's door, Lewis found the fog had thickened once again…they'd soon be eating it with a spoon. He coughed slightly against the damp working its way down his throat and pulled his coat up around his neck as he ran for his car.

"Excuse me, Sir?" a voice called to him out of the dark and mist.

"Can I help you?" he asked turning and finding himself facing a young, slightly built man huddled into his coat against the chill.

"I'm not sure, but I hope so. DC Morse, Thames Valley Police."

Oh.

And should he have known? Should he have seen his old chief inspector in this young constable? Heard his Morse in this one's voice? Being a trained detective and all, it seemed like he should have noted something and not been taken so completely by surprise—well, not hardly! He'd not gone to bed expecting to bump into his long-dead chief inspector let alone the detective constable Morse had once been—not even.

So, no, he shouldn't have known, regardless of those piercing, blue eyes and that intent focused gaze. But, standing there, wisps of misty fog dancing between and making their meeting even more surreal than it already was…he could see the man in the boy; not just that probing gaze, but the stance and the bearing. Not the hair, of course. He'd never thought to wonder what color Morse's thick white mane had been—brown as it turned out, lighter than Lewis' own, maybe a hint of red. Age had thickened Morse, just like it had Lewis, weighed him down a bit…but it wasn't the years that had given Morse his vulnerability, it was already there in the constable's eyes—maybe the years they'd spent together were coloring Lewis' perceptions.

Or maybe not…a motherless Morse had written up a list of ways to off himself long before now, lost Susan Fallon, his place in Oxford. Not surprising, then, to see those sorts of blows reflected in the young man's face; especially considering that time had had less of a chance to blunt the pain.

"Sir?" DC Morse said, and Lewis became aware that he'd been staring at his man a beat or two too long.

"I'm sorry," he said. "What was it?"

"I said I noted your car, the red Jag? At a crime scene a short while ago. I was wondering if you could explain your presence there." Right...he could pull out his ID and warrant card and let the DC from somewhere in the 1960's have a look at the changes half a century could make in such things—well, not that much surely, because the ID and warrant card in his pocket belonged to the sergeant he'd been…so the constable could get a good look at what a couple of decades could do. Either way, they wouldn't go far in giving this young Morse what he wanted.

"Sorry…the Jag's not mine," Lewis said. "I'm just there." He motioned vaguely at his fog-shrouded car along the drive and hoped the fog, the dark, and the condensation that had collected on the Jag's windscreen had kept the constable from getting a good look at him and his older self as he'd passed by them.

DC Morse frowned at him. "Do you know who owns the Jag?"

Lewis peered through the fog to see with relief that Morse had turned off his lights and tried for a couple hours of sleep. No copper would pound on the door of someone who might or might not have been at a crime scene at this hour…he'd wait until morning, and none of this would matter at all by then.

"The man who lives there," he said, pointing. "But, it looks as though he's gone to bed now. Likely catch him tomorrow…" Morse sighed heavily in a way that Lewis would have recognized anyway; Lewis hid his smile and tried to look helpful as he nodded a farewell and made towards his car. But, he hadn't really thought he'd get off quite that easy, and he was right.

"You didn't happen to be out with him, earlier tonight, did you?"

"Me? No, not me…I've been tucked up in me bed all night," Lewis assured him.

Morse looked at him skeptically, "Up early."

"Oh, aye. The boss likes a nice lie-in, and that leaves me to be seeing to things from dawn to dusk, but that's the job, eh?"

"Sounds like police work," the constable said.

"Could do…let you get on with yours then, shall I?"

"Right, have a good ni—day, then."

"Ta. You, too," Lewis said. He stood a moment longer, feeling as though there should be something else to say to the man who would grow up to be his chief inspector. But what? Don't hold so tightly to your regrets? Don't think so much? Susan wasn't worth your loss and pain? Take it a little easier on your sergeant—he's doing his best? He couldn't say any of that, so instead he said, "Mind how you go," and left the constable watching him walk into the mist.


	4. Misreading the Signs

Misreading the Signs

DC Endeavour Morse frowned as he watched the man walk away. He wasn't altogether convinced he'd had the truth out of him; there'd been something about the whole encounter that just wasn't right—besides the awful hour and the miserable, chilly damp. There'd been that quiet regrouping when Morse had mentioned the police. A certain amount of that was normal when dealing with the public as though there was a collective guilty conscience making even the most law-abiding citizens cringe upon hearing the word 'police'. But this had gone beyond that…and that searching look the man—and why hadn't he thought to get a name and address just in case he'd need them later?—had given him, as though he was sizing him up or…looking for something _in_ him.

And there'd been a certain evasiveness in the man's answers for all he'd chattered on a bit…that was normal too; nerves loosening the tongue. But what had the man had to be nervous about? Well, besides being accosted in the street at 3:55 in the morning and the swirling fog and apparently a demanding boss…

But, still, there'd been something…the man's stance and clothes and even the shape of his car not quite visible in the fog; there'd been something different about them all…something…he couldn't pin down. It was like a blank in the morning's crossword with a clue he knew he _knew_ but couldn't answer all the same…or the one faintly-heard instrument in an orchestra playing just a fraction off tune.

He didn't like it. But he had liked the man, in the few brief moments they'd stood there. Friendly, open, helpful, a look in his eyes as though life was good…young. Morse laughed without humour at that. There couldn't have been many years between the two of them, but all the same, the man he was watching disappear into the fog seemed young, while Morse…felt old. He sighed heavily, not sure he'd ever felt young…and now he was being foolish. Time to go home as Thursday had ordered. Time to get some sleep and start fresh in the morning.


	5. Missing the Off-Ramp

Missing the Off-Ramp

The car, when Lewis reached it, wasn't the one he'd parked earlier. It was one he'd had later…he was too tired to work out when exactly, and it hardly mattered because the key he pulled from his pocket worked just fine. Besides, this car had had a heater that worked almost too well. He was thankful for that; he was chilled to the bone.

Visibility was so poor that he missed his turn and had to loop back around. The fog almost seemed to resist him as he pushed open the car door...well, he was still dreaming, wasn't he? Maybe it did; after the twists and turns of the night, it wouldn't be that surprising. Still, he was home—at the flat where he'd kissed his daughter good night and gone to bed however many hours ago that had been. Maybe this endless night was drawing to a close in the waking world, and he'd have done with the lot soon enough.

He rubbed wearily at his face as he slowly climbed the steps to his front door. He paused there, digging about in his pocket to pull out his key—only it wasn't his key and it wasn't his door. He shrugged, so much for it all being over, and slipped through the vaguely familiar door.

A soft light from a room off to the right showed him an unfamiliar front room, and a voice down the hallway called out, "Robbie?" He frowned thinking it was a voice he should know, but it was heavy with sleep and he was too tired to place it. A woman, but not his wife…he'd hoped the dream would allow him to slip back into bed beside her one last time; and he'd feared it would have taken that horrible turn his dreams invariably did and he'd have turned to her and found a long-dead corpse or even worse…

He swallowed and followed the voice down the hall into a bedroom.

"Oh, it's you," he almost said, because Laura Hobson had been turning up in his dreams more and more frequently as of late, and he probably should have known it would be her. Instead, he paused at the door and said nothing at all.

She sat up enough to lean on her elbow and fiddle with her mobile. "I didn't hear…" she said more to it than to him, and then blew out a puff of relieved air. "That's right…Baxter's on call." She tossed the mobile onto a nightstand beside her, and he could see the glint of a wedding ring on her finger. Involuntarily, he felt for and found one on his own though he hadn't had one on earlier. "And Knox—what were you doing out?" she asked as she flopped back onto the bed.

He played with his ear and couldn't for the life of him answer her.

"Robbie," she said with a sigh, "you can't keep bailing the man out." She frowned at him when he didn't answer and cocked her head towards the bed. "Come on, then…morning will be here earlier than you think—" not at the rate this particular night was going, but she couldn't know that "…and you're dead tired." She was right. He was tired. Tired and old. As old as he'd been when he'd climbed into his bed earlier in the night.

Laura Hobson had a mirror on her bedroom wall; in it the face he'd grown accustomed to seeing blinked at him. The face of a man who'd already lived a good part of his life. One who'd laughed a lot and one who'd been marked by sorrow and loss. An old, well-lived-in face that was at the moment dead tired. So, back in that other part of this humdinger of a dream…Val was gone. And nothing he could do to call her back.

"Do I have to get up and drag you to bed?" Hobson asked, and he didn't think he was up for the fight. He slipped out of his clothes—ones he'd bought off the rack and hoped for the best, because Val had always been the one to shop for him before but she'd been dead—without embarrassment or self-consciousness because if there was one thing he was certain of, it was that Laura Hobson wasn't in his bedroom…or rather he wasn't in hers.

_(No more than somewhere a man who wasn't a man in a blue police box that wasn't a police box was frowning at the controls of his time machine and muttering to himself as he made some rather hurried, complicated calculations…)_

So with no qualms at all, he climbed into bed beside her. She turned to him and kissed him, and just like that his exhaustion was gone and he wasn't all that old after all. Feelings and hopes he'd spent years scowling away and refusing to acknowledge swept through him as real and genuine and all-encompassing as those he held for Val. He kissed her back and made love to her as though the rings on their fingers weren't figments of his dreams.

And after, when she murmured she loved him as she drifted off to sleep, he didn't swallow back the 'and I you, Pet' that welled up in him. And then, finally, he found the deep, restful sleep he'd spent the earlier night chasing.


	6. Now Arriving at the Departure Gate

Now Arriving at the Departure Gate

While he'd slept, the fog had lifted. And though when he yawned himself back to wakefulness after a long lie-in his heavy, dark curtains kept him from knowing it, the morning sun shone brightly down on the dreamy spires of Oxford.

He was unsurprised to find himself in his own bed. Alone, though he could hear his daughter puttering about his kitchen looking for his sugar bowl and humming softly to herself. He sat up on the edge of his bed, rubbed his ear and the back of his neck, ran a hand through his mussed hair, and shook his head. Where had all that come from?

It had been quite the dream. And quite a good one at that.

Author's Notes:

_I have never been a fan of the 'it was all a dream' explanation for stories of this vein…as a one-time writer of _StarGate: SG-1_ fanfic and an avid reader and fan of scifi (though I've so far managed to give the good Doctor a miss to the chagrin of all the Whovians living in my house) I'm not really happy with pulling out here without a nice, albeit bogus, scifi backstory to explain why Lewis was blundering along through the mists of time without an anchor in this piece. Unfortunately, I don't have one, or the time to come up with one, or the imagination to even fathom Lewis in a scifi adventure, and I seriously doubt such a story would go down well on these boards, lol, so I'm afraid this is where it ends…_

The beginning quote is taken completely out of context, but it seemed a great fit for this story, and besides I love Dave Barry.

_As to Lewis knowing about MacNutt from his early days with Morse when we well know he knew nothing about MacNutt until The Masonic Mysteries a few years into the show…well, time was a bit wonky throughout this story; is it surprising the timeline got a bit muddled?_

Having poked fun so much at this idea, I'm a bit hesitant to publically thank Autohumans for the idea, but having opened myself up to the ridicule such a story could easily earn on a board such as this, I feel it's only fair that he/she share the blame…and as I've gotten my share of enjoyment writing this one, a thanks is definitely in order.

_This thing isn't as polished as I'd normally like it to be; my apologies, but I'm off to see the grandbaby…_


End file.
